Fog on the Tyne

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  Two days later, the head barman informed Paddy that earlier that morning, while he had been out, two detectives had been in the pub looking for him. ‘David Glover junior has been arrested for armed robbery, and he has claimed that he was in here drinking with his father and three prison officers,’ he said.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Paddy groaned. ‘What the fucking hell is he thinking of?’ If Paddy supported Glover’s alibi, the prison officers might have faced prosecution, but if he didn’t Glover might have been charged with armed robbery and faced a lengthy prison sentence. Paddy had no choice: he had to support Glover’s alibi and say that he had been in the pub throughout the relevant time with his father and the three prison officers.

  When the detectives began to take a closer look at all the individuals concerned, they soon discovered that the prison officers’ drinking partner, Glover senior, was supposed to be behind bars – but not the type that sell alcohol. The incident was reported in all the national newspapers, and Glover escaped prosecution, but the three officers were sacked for gross misconduct. With far more pressing problems, concerning the Harrisons, to contend with, Paddy didn’t forget David Glover junior completely, but rather foolishly he did put Glover’s eagerness to involve himself in his affairs to the back of his mind.

  Paddy contacted a relative of the Harrisons and asked him to accompany him to the hospital to visit the Bull. In the intensive care unit, Paddy and the man stood at the Bull’s bedside watching as he gasped for oxygen. ‘He is my friend,’ Paddy said. ‘Tell the Harrison boys that I want to talk to them about this. They can bring as many men as they can muster. There will be just me and my brothers, and we will be waiting in the Gold Cup pub tomorrow at 2 p.m.’ The man simply nodded before turning and walking away.

  Paddy Conroy is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. Paddy knew that if the Harrison firm did turn up they would be mob-handed and they would all be armed. Paddy rang his friends and associates from all over Newcastle and told them to meet him at the Gold Cup pub at midday the following day. ‘Don’t hang about outside,’ he warned them. ‘Let the Harrison mob turn up at 2 p.m. thinking there’s just a few of us. They will then unwittingly walk into a fucking massacre, and we can do the lot of them.’ Approximately 150 men loyal to the Conroy family arrived at the pub the following morning. The pub was so packed that 20 or 30 men had to stand outside in the back courtyard. The Harrisons never did show – no doubt they got to hear about the reception party that awaited their arrival.

  At 3 p.m., Paddy went for a drink in his local pub, the Grainger. Most of his friends had gone home, but 50 or so had stayed out for a drink. Just as it was getting dark, a man came into the pub and called Paddy to one side. ‘Be on your guard, Paddy,’ he said. ‘Somebody has riddled Duncan Harrison’s mobile home with bullets, and there’s bound to be a comeback.’ Paddy instinctively knew who had done this, but in order to protect the guilty he refused to name him. Paddy was aware that the actions of his trigger-happy associate would provoke a response from the Harrisons, and he didn’t want to sit at home with his family waiting to find out the severity of their reprisal.

  The best form of defence is undoubtedly attack, and so that night allies of the Conroy family lay in wait for the Harrisons to emerge from Fort Harrison. In the early hours of the morning, two or three members of the Harrison family walked out in the company of one of the Bull’s cousins. They were chased, but with fear on their side they soon managed to lose their pursuers. Later that day, however, the Bull’s cousin was seen walking along the street. A car pulled up, and a group of men jumped out. The Bull’s cousin was grabbed and forced into the boot at gunpoint before the vehicle sped away. The terrified man was taken to an alleyway at the side of the Grainger pub, where his abductors attempted to break his arms and legs with crowbars and a hammer. They were partially successful: both of his arms were broken, and his legs were so badly beaten that it was some time before he could walk again without the aid of a stick.

  Ironically, the Bull’s cousin ended up on the same hospital ward as the Bull, which caused the doctors and nurses a great deal of concern. The police had warned hospital staff that each side involved in the feud would be more than happy to carry out further attacks on their opponents as they lay in their beds. Extra security had been drafted in to watch the hospital entrances, but that didn’t prevent the Bull from staggering from his own bed to confront his cousin. ‘If I find out you were involved in the attack on me,’ the Bull said, ‘you won’t be in here for much longer. You will be downstairs in the morgue.’ As soon as the Bull’s cousin was discharged from the hospital, he hobbled to the airport and waved goodbye to Newcastle forever. Nobody has seen or heard from him since.

  It was not all one-way traffic, though. The Harrisons were equally competent at serving up violence. Twenty-five-year-old Patrick Kirby, an associate of the Conroys, was gunned down outside Paddy’s Happy House. Kirby left a trail of blood as he staggered from the scene of the shooting, which nearly claimed his life. Geoffrey Harrison, aged 21, and Paul Benson, aged 19, were charged with attempted murder, wounding with intent and violent disorder, but both were cleared of all charges. Although he was cleared of the shooting, Geoffrey Harrison was given a total of 30 months in prison for firearms offences.

  On another occasion, Paddy was at home when Maureen called to him and said that four of the Harrison gang had just pulled up outside in a car. Grabbing a handgun, Paddy rushed out into the street to confront them before they could alight from their vehicle. Only the driver was unarmed. Two of his passengers were brandishing shotguns, and a third had a handgun. Before they had a chance to point the weapons in Paddy’s direction, he was on them. ‘What do you fucking want?’ Paddy asked as he leant into the car. The man nearest to Paddy put his hand up as if to protect his head and then began pleading with him not to shoot him. Suddenly, a shot rang out, and Paddy jumped back. The man in the passenger seat, on the far side of the car, had fired his handgun into the air. As Paddy moved away from the vehicle, he gave the occupants enough time to train their guns on him and open fire. As bullets and shotgun pellets whistled past him, Paddy attempted to return fire, but his weapon had jammed. Paddy turned, ran to his house and took cover behind a brick parapet that supported the front door. When the bullets continued to fly in his direction, Paddy kicked the door closed in the hope that the shooting would stop, but a more sustained hail of gunfire began, which blew all the glass out and sent bullets whizzing down the hall. Maureen and her daughter were in the kitchen, which faced the front door, and so Paddy dashed along the hallway shouting for them to take cover. As Paddy did so, he felt a bullet smash into his back, but he continued running until he was in the kitchen and sure that his family was safe.

  When the guns fell silent, Paddy waited a few minutes before peering down the hall. The front door had been obliterated, and there were bullet holes in the walls. Maureen looked at Paddy and shook her head in dismay. Paddy knew what this meant. He had only one course of action open to him: he was going to have to redecorate. ‘Check my back, Maureen,’ Paddy said. ‘I think I’ve been shot.’ Paddy could feel pain, but there didn’t appear to be any blood. When Maureen inspected Paddy’s back for bullet holes, she could see that there were marks and abrasions but that the skin had not been broken. Paddy later discovered that a large piece of concrete lintel had been shot away above the front door. The bullet that hit it must have ricocheted off a wall or the ceiling before striking him.

  The following night, the Happy House was petrol bombed. One of Paddy’s tenants on the lower floor was watching television when his window exploded and the room was engulfed in flames. Fortunately, he escaped the fire unscathed and damage was minimal. Paddy did have to move the tenant to the top floor, as he said he no longer felt safe in that particular room. The Harrisons had broken the criminal code: they had endangered non-combatants, and they had previously involved a woman and child in a feud. As far as Paddy was concerned, the rulebook had to be discarded. He
wanted the Harrisons struck down; he wanted them terminated like vermin.

  Less than 12 hours after the attack on the Happy House, Duncan Harrison’s son Joseph looked nervously around before getting out of his car. Despite his vigilance, he failed to see a man hiding in bushes nearby. Once Joseph was out and away from his vehicle, the man strode purposefully towards him, pulled a gun out from his jacket and shot him in the face. At the hospital, Joseph’s injuries were described as not life-threatening, but this incident brought about an escalation in violence that undoubtedly was. Both sides began purchasing caches of firearms and wearing bulletproof vests every time they dared to venture out of their homes. Life in the wild West End of Newcastle began to compare with life in west Beirut.

  The only people who benefited from the volatile situation were the members of the Grainger pub darts team. Notoriously poor players, they were competing against another local pub team one night when the Harrisons pulled up outside the Grainger and opened fire. All the windows were shot out as everybody dived for cover. When the sound of squealing tyres indicated that the Harrisons had sped away, people got up off the floor and continued drinking. However, one member of the visiting darts team remained motionless where he had fallen during the attack. Initially, it was thought the man might have stopped a bullet, but it was soon discovered that he had passed out through fear. Sitting him on a stool, the landlord tried to reassure the man that everything was going to be OK. Trembling and weeping, the man, who had soiled himself, begged to be taken home. His equally terrified teammates, huddled in the corner of the pub, unanimously agreed it was time to leave and declared the Grainger team winners by default. Whether this is true or not, it is said by the Grainger regulars to be the only darts match that their team has ever won.

  Soon after the Grainger pub was shot up, the Happy House was petrol bombed again. On this occasion, the front door and one of the first-floor bedsits were set on fire. Collecting the rent from his not so Happy House tenants became somewhat embarrassing for Paddy. He tried to laugh off the attacks by saying that there would be no additional charge for the heating the fires were generating, but it’s unlikely that his tenants ever did see the funny side of it.

  Shortly after the Bull’s release from hospital, he was once more removed from ‘active service’ when officers from the Metropolitan Police and Northumbria Police raided a house in order to rescue two men who had earlier been kidnapped in London – and found the Bull. It was alleged that the cockneys had taken payment for a delivery of fake perfume but that the goods had failed to arrive on Tyneside. The Bull and others, according to the police, had travelled to London in a transit van and kidnapped the men. They had allegedly said that they would release them only when they were given the perfume or had their cash returned. To be honest, the whole case stank – if you’ll pardon the pun. The cockneys who were found in the house with the Bull and others said that they had no idea who had abducted them, as their kidnappers had been wearing ski masks. The Bull protested his innocence, but the police were far from convinced, and so he was charged with kidnap and remanded in custody to await trial.

  Just after the Bull was locked up, the feud with the Harrisons reached its peak, or lowest point, depending on your outlook. One of their number had the audacity to desecrate the grave of Leonard and Neil Conroy. They smashed the headstone and, a few days later, threw the pieces at Michael Conroy’s front door. In the weeks that followed this barbaric act, there were 22 separate attacks on the Harrison firm, during which numerous people received gunshot wounds.

  In one incident, Alan Harrison, aged 20, and his brother Charles, aged 18, were out walking their Rottweiler in Rye Hill, in the West End. A man approached the brothers and words were exchanged, but before a fight could break out the man pulled out a gun and shot the dog in the head and the brothers multiple times in the legs. Charles was so badly injured that he ended up in intensive care fighting for his life on a ventilator. As well as ‘successful hits’ such as this, there were many occasions when gunmen simply missed their intended victims, and others in which vehicles and property were the targets.

  It was David Glover junior who came to break the news to Paddy about his family’s grave being desecrated. Paddy couldn’t accept that anybody would stoop that low, and so initially he refused to believe what he was told. Glover said that a friend of the Harrisons named Billy Collier had been seen in the Blue Man pub wearing a bulletproof vest and brandishing a shotgun while bragging about the crime. Glover said that Collier had claimed that he had since been offered £5,000 to dig up Leonard Conroy’s corpse and throw body parts through the front window of a member of the Conroy family. Paddy kept telling himself that this vile act could be a ploy to lead him into a trap or to make him do something irrational. ‘Keep your head, Paddy,’ he kept telling himself. ‘Keep your head until you know for sure that it is true.’

  Walking down the street, trying to rationalise all that he had just been told, Paddy bumped into a man he knew. The man was not involved in any type of criminality and so had no reason to lie to Paddy regarding anybody involved in the feud. This man frequented the Blue Man pub, and so Paddy asked him if he had seen Collier drinking in there. The man told Paddy how Collier had been boasting in the pub about the Conroy headstone being smashed and the fact that he was being offered money to dig up Leonard’s body. Paddy knew at once that Glover had been telling the truth and that, in the name of his father, he would have to have his revenge.

  The following evening, a member of the Harrison family was confronted by a gunman and shot five times in the legs. In addition, Duncan Harrison’s mobile home, on the Oakwellgate site, in Gateshead, was riddled with bullets and blasted with a shotgun, but, fortunately for him, he happened to be elsewhere at the time.

  An hour after the attack on the caravan, Joseph Harrison opened the letterbox of the Happy House lodgings and tried to pour petrol inside. Unfortunately for Joseph, someone was lying in wait for him. It was almost as if it had been second-guessed that the Harrisons would attack the Happy House if their father’s caravan was trashed. As the silhouette of Joseph Harrison appeared in the frosted glass, a gunman took aim with a shotgun and fired from the other side of the door. The blast hit Joseph in the face and chest and threw him to the floor. The gunman fired again, hitting him in the face once more. As Joseph’s accomplices began to run, the gunman took aim again and fired, hitting one of them in the back. During the gun battle that followed, a child in the street ran for cover and an innocent motorist caught in the crossfire had to crawl to safety as his vehicle was sprayed with bullets and shotgun pellets.

  When the police arrived, the gunman and the Harrison firm were nowhere to be seen, but a telltale trail of blood led officers to ‘Fort Harrison’. The police arrested the three Harrison brothers and charged them with conspiracy to set fire to the Happy House and two offences of possessing firearms with intent to endanger life. The police alleged that sawn-off shotguns, pump-action rifles and a revolver had been used during the incident. Three days later, the police raided the Happy House and found guns that had been hidden in the loft. However, because the property had numerous residents, the police were unable to establish who actually owned the firearms. No doubt officers had their suspicions, and they didn’t concern the elderly lady in room seven.

  Everybody associated with the Conroy family refused to assist the police when asked to make statements against the Harrisons, but Terry Nordman, a close friend of the Harrisons who had been present when the Conroys’ grave was desecrated, turned supergrass against his friends in an exchange for a new identity. It’s fair to say Nordman knew that if the Harrisons were locked up he would be left out on the streets with little or no backup against the Conroys. It wasn’t the type of future any man would relish, especially one who had been placed in the top three of a gunman’s most-wanted list. To save himself, Nordman took the police’s offer of a new identity in exchange for giving the evidence that would deprive his former friends of their liberty
.

  Prior to the trial, members of the Harrison and Conroy families found themselves at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court, for unrelated matters. It’s never been established who did what to instigate what followed, but up to 20 people ended up brawling in the waiting room. Both men and women were involved in the fighting, and horrified members of the public reported seeing clumps of hair, a lump of flesh and blood ‘spattered everywhere’ at the scene. When the fighting broke out, a court clerk had to press a panic button to summon extra police. Twelve officers entered the waiting room to separate the warring factions, and others threw a cordon around the building to stop people loyal to the Conroy family from entering. A female was arrested, but she was later released without charge.

  A few months later, Andrew, James and Joseph Harrison all pleaded not guilty to the attack on the Happy House and elected to stand trial at York Crown Court after their defence team had successfully argued that a trial held in Newcastle would be prejudicial because of their notoriety. Terry Nordman told the jury that he had been with the Harrison brothers when their father phoned to say his caravan had been blasted by a shotgun. Nordman said that the Harrison brothers had then planned a revenge firebomb attack on Conroy’s Happy House bedsit premises, as they believed that he was responsible for the caravan shooting. Nordman said that the Harrisons had marched up to the Happy House hooded and armed. Fifteen shots were fired before Joseph Harrison returned home injured and was taken to hospital.

  The brothers were convicted of conspiracy to cause arson with intent to endanger life and two offences of possessing firearms. They were sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for each offence. After the case, Detective Superintendent John Renwick said, ‘The sentence serves as a warning to anyone intent on using weapons to carry out criminal activity. They do so at their cost. This was a very difficult case to bring to court because of the reluctance of some people to give evidence for fear of reprisals. Three people did give evidence, and they have been put on the Northumbria Police witness-protection scheme. They had the courage to help police in this case and they have been given a new identity and have been rehoused outside the force area.’